The project

Because I mentioned it before, and because the project that’s causing me to be super-duper busy is kind of pissing me off, I thought I’d share my pain with you. I’ll start at the beginning. Sort of.

Our senior manager came to me, rather clandestinely, to ask if I would be interested in the project. For our fancy new information platform, we need some kind of request form, accessible to anyone in the company and providing an output compatible with MOSS. (But not MOSS, because MOSS is secret and no one but our department can have access to it.) As a web developer and technical writer, it seemed right up my alley, so I said I’d think about it. She told me I should talk to D__.

As it happened, D__ had already spoken to me and I had all the info I needed. My analysis showed that regardless of the countless (and thankless, I’m sure) hours D__ had put into the project so far, there was still a lot that hadn’t been done. There were no formal requirements, no specific design and no consideration for the secondary users (the people to whom the form is sent). So I told our senior manager, “No, thanks. Given my current workload and the amount of work that would still need to be done, I’m not interested.” “Okay,” she replied, “that’s fine.” (Or something to that effect.)

The very next day, my manager invited me into a conference room and explained, as I mentioned, that R__ could take over some of my workload and K__ could do the design work, leaving me with plenty of time to work on the project. He told me to think about it. Given that I’d said no and had subsequently been told that my workload would be changed to free up time, I understood that my saying no was not a suitable response and that if I didn’t just say yes, I’d be told to work on it anyway. So, later that day, I told my manager that I’d talk to D__ and get more info and once K__ had the design finished, I’d get to work.

Later in the week, I asked Cyon for some advice about some components, then Argo the Greek asked if I’d actually decided to work on it. (I’d previously told him that I figured it would be a gong show and I wanted no part of it.) I told him that I’d been given the impression that the decision hadn’t really been mine to make. Of course, my manager overheard this and asked me why I felt that way. I explained that because after I’d already said no and he’d explained how my workload would be changed, I understood that I didn’t really have a choice. He said that he’d given me the choice and I hadn’t responded. Which was bullshit, since I’d told him that I couldn’t begin until K__ was finished with the design. But he entirely undid his reasoning by explaining that sometimes, in a work environment, we’re expected to do things we don’t want to do. So, obviously, I was expected to do something I didn’t want to do.

Anywho. That’s my story. I’m working on a badly-planned project and trying to make it successful. Even though I don’t want to work on it. And I pretty much only get a chance to do anything by working overtime.